World of Warcraft TCG World Championships 2007

"Blah blah blah blah"

At the begin of every major tournament like the World Champs, we hold a player's meeting to get all the players seated, make sure they're registered properly, and to go over how the tournament is going to run. It's a necessary evil - we need to give the judges time to collect decklists and fix any registration issues, but I know it's tough for players who are itching to start playing.

My philosophy is to always keep things short. So instead of having a bunch of big announcements, I just teased a couple things:

1) World Champs is the beginning of the World of Warcraft TCG Player of the Year race.
2) First two North American Darkmoon Faires will be in Orlando in March, and Columbus in April.
3) New prize options for Dream Machine winners such as home theatre setups or travel and hotel to any DMF in the world.
4) North American Regionals will be split into three seasons, running January-April, April-August, and August-December. Seasons 1 and 3 will lead into one of ten Championships held across the country.

Tune in to wowtcg.com over the next few weeks for details.

I'm Sorry Everyone

I woke up today to rain dripping down the window of my hotel room.

Rain.

In San Diego.

I want a refund. Someone is going to have to pay.

Breaking News!

Tom Chilton, Lead Game Designer for World of Warcraft, will be joining us at the "Dinner with the Devs" on Saturday!

Quest For Glory: San Diego!

The Darkmoon Faire Quest For Glory will return to San Diego. We've seen some amazing entries in the past, so I can't wait to see what y'all come up with. This will be the last time to get one of the playmats featuring art by Gabe from Penny Arcade, as they're being retired after this event.

Event Highlight: Dinner with Devs

On Saturday at 11:00 am, there will be a March of the Legion Starter Deck tournament. Two invites will be given away to the winner and their guest to have dinner at Nobu with some of the most important people behind the World of Warcraft MMORPG. Scheduled to appear are:

Chris Metzen – Vice President Creative Development
Shawn Carnes - Lead Developer Ancillary Products
J. Allen Brack – Lead Producer World of Warcraft
Lee Sparks – Associate Producer World of Warcraft
Scott Mercer - Lead Encounter Designer, Raid Dungeons World of Warcraft
Cory Stockton – Lead Level Designer, Raid Dungeons World of Warcraft
Travis Day – Game Designer, Item Creation, World of Warcraft

The winner of the tournament will get one of the invites, and the other will be awarded as a door prize. This is perfect for World of Warcraft fans that are interested in trying out the TCG, or just anyone that wants to get a rare chance to hang out with the minds behind the best MMO of all time.

Oh, and I'll be there too. /fanboy

The Main Event

For those who haven't seen it, here's the new prize breakdown.

1st Place: $100,000
2nd Place: $25,000
3rd - 4th Place: $10,000
5th - 8th Place: $4,000
9th - 16th Place: $2,000
17th - 32nd Place: $1,500
33rd - 48th Place: $1,250
49th - 100th Place: $1,000

Day 1 of Worlds will be 9-11 rounds, based on the number of players. It's 95% likely to be 10 rounds, but there are a few situations where we will want to flex up or down a round to have a "cleaner" cut to Day 2.

Swiss pairings work very well for single day tournaments to break to a top 8. One thing that Swiss pairings can't account for players that get "paired down" consistently losing. If there are three 5-0 players, two will get paired against each other, and one will be paired down with a 4-1 player. Usually the higher ranked player will win, but if they lose and this happens four or five times in one day, you can have a big clump of players at the top scrambling for the last couple of playoff slots.

At the end of Day 1 we will cut to the top 96 players. This means that everyone who makes Day 2 will be "in the money," so no one will end up coming back to play on Saturday and walk away with nothing to show for it. The four players on the bubble that didn't make Day 2 will also receive $1,000 - I'm sure they'd prefer a shot at the $100,000, but someone has to be the guy right below the cut, and hopefully this makes it a little less painful.

Theoretically, everyone that makes Day 2 will be in contention for the top 8, and 2/3rds of the players will be eligible to make more money by winning the last round, so almost every match will still mean something.

Things I'm Thankful For

I've been on the sidelines for about 30 "professional" level TCG events, but this was the first time I've been calling the shots. I've got an amazing group of assistant coaches that make events like this happen. So if you see any of these guys next week, be nice to them.

Ian Estrin - Chairs, tables, banners, pipe & drape, power, stages - the list is nearly infinite. Someone has to make sure every bit of infrastructure needed to make the event happen is ordered, designed, approved, printed, shipped, and installed. It truly is a thankless job, and Ian does it with a smile.

Alex Charsky - Alex wrangles all our volunteer judges. He builds schedules, arranges flights, books their hotel, organizes our staff dinner, and coordinates the judge gifts. We simply couldn't run tournaments likes this without our volunteer judges, who spend 12 or more hours a day on their feet. Alex has recently been promoted to Judge Manager, and I'm sure that everyone involved with our judge program has already seen his impact.

Rune Horvik - Players worry about just how good The Greench is. I have nightmares about a laptop catching on fire in the middle of round eight, and having to start the tournament over. But with Rune manning the computer, I know that I have one the best taking care of business.

This is by no means a complete list. There are also the guys (and gals!) that make Regionals happen every month, the guys that update the web site every day, the guys that make make the Sneak Previews cool, and even the guys that sign the checks.

If you have a good time next week, it's all thanks to them.

Artists! (Part 1)

Alex Horley-Orlandelli, Jonboy Meyers, Dan Scott, as well as Blizzard mainstays Samwise and Glenn Rane will be have autograph sessions all weekend long. You can get your TCG cards signed, or pick up one of these awesome signing cards for free.

Here comes Santa Claus!

Yes, those are eight Wiis, four XBox 360s, 40 iPod Nanos, and four iPod touches. No, you can't have them.

You can win some of them at Worlds in two weeks though.

Seriously. 40 iPod Nanos. What was I thinking?

Pretty Schedule

Download it here (3.7 MB pdf), courtesy of OmniGraffle.